The 61st National Awards has been announced today evening and the Kannada film industry has won four National Awards in various categories this time.

The first and the prominent one is the best regional award for P Sheshadri's 'December 1'. Sheshadri is winning the award for the 8th time in a row and has already created a record in the history of the Indian cinema by winning eight National Regional Film awards consecutively. Apart from the regional cinema, P Sheshadri has also won an award for the screenplay. Panchakshari who is a protege of Girish Kasaravalli has won an award for best screenplay for his film 'Prakruthi'. Along with these awards in Feature film category, Girish Kasaravalli's documentary on Jnanapeeth Award winner U R Ananthamurthy has won him an award in the non-feature category.

This year nearly 30 films from Kannada had come from the final round. Sheshagiri Yelameli's '1857', P Sheshadri's 'December 1', Nagendra Shah's 'Haadu Hakki Haadu', Ramadas Naidu's 'Homework', Giriraj's 'Jatta', Kavitha Lankesh's 'Kariya Kanbitta', Pavan Kumar's 'Lucia' were some of the prominent films which had contest from Kannada in the final round.